Class 3 (Feb 5th, 2015)

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Henry Plotkin - naturalizing - accounting for a phenomenon as natural - biological, evolved phenomenon. they want to understand agency in the context of evolutionary theory.

Darwin Machines Ch. 4 - Behavior Without Thought

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From philosophy, in line with CC, knowledge is represented in propositions of a certain sort; justified true belief.

belief - special relation between a person and an object of belief

object of belief - a mental proposition

special relationship - an attitude, in this case of confidence toward the relevant object of belief.

knowledge without truth is impossible according to this view. knowledge by nature is true.

truth is a correspondence relationship between a proposition and a feature of the world.

truth by correspondence according to aristotle - is a statement of what is -- that it is; or a statement of what is not - that it is not.

truth by coherence - ex. mathematics - a statement is true that is suitably interconnected to a system of statements. however, (ex. Freud) there can be coherent systems that are false.

truth from pragmatism - a proposition is true if it is useful. However, even useful theories can still be false.

our definition of knowledge separates us from other animals. language separates us from animals. we can never know anything for sure. definition driven by theory.

Plotkin - sympathetic to morphological computation, knowledge is useful and doesn't require self awareness. one function, then one label. then you see the similarities among things that on the surface can look very different